We are a Community Enterprise that works with individuals, neighborhoods, groups, schools and community organizers to create abundant, low-maintenance and beautiful gardens.  Our efforts and actions are localized, committed, and work from the inside-out in the communities we live, work and play in.

We are a co-operative business that weighs intellectual and physical labor equally, and the collective grows and adapts to utilize each persons gifts to the fullest while she earns a living wage throughout the entire year.  This groundedness enables us to focus on community building, empowerment, education, and advocacy 'full time'!

We view our relationships to each other, through broad-based community development organizations like Good Work, and to our clients in the greater Durham community as the cornerstone for regenerative edible landscapes and community gardens.

Keith Shaljian, 30, grew up on Long Island and experienced illegitimate power and authority first hand playing high school football, where he saw an entire team give up in the Suffolk County Championship because they just wanted the season to end.  He attended Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY receiving a BA in Philosophy and Public Praxis, a program that integrates public and academic work.  In DC, he worked as a line cook, as a production assistant with Pacifica Radio's Peacewatch, freelance journalist, car courier, private investigator assistant, indoor painter, and gardener.  These bewildering peregrinations about the post 9-11 and peak oil world naturally led him to the Piedmont's food justice movement and Bountiful Backyards, which he co-founded with Mike Shaljian, John Benjamin Crain, and Kyra Moore in 2006.

Christopher Rumbley, 28, from Randolph County, NC, works with Bountiful Backyards as a permaculture designer and practitioner with a focus on community-scale and other special projects.  He facilitates collaboration with other community organizations, youth apprentices and students.  He is a grassroots economic organizer with the CDC Good Work in their Green Jobs and Good Food Collaborative. While living in Brooklyn and later post-Katrina New Orleans, he studied with permaculturist Andrew Jones, and received his permaculture design certificate from Warren Bush at Quail Springs Permaculture Farm in CA where he also mentored in their Sustainable Vocations program.  He has also worked as a wilderness guide in the Appalachians.

Sarah Vroom, 28, grew up in rural North Idaho and moved to the Bay Area attending Mills College.  After receiving a B.A. in Environmental Studies and seeing first hand the realities of industrial agricultural in California, she studied permaculture with Christopher Shein at the Oakland Permaculture Institute.  She is a lead designer and client liason, educational outreach and community workshop coordinator, and project coordinator with Bountiful Backyards.  She is a member of the Durham Bike Coop and DJ extraordinaire out and about Durham.

David Benfield, 33 was raised in Durham and comes to BBY with a diverse background including a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Southern California.  After college, he worked as a web director for a nonprofit online newspaper, a client liason in a web consulting firm, and green building.  His journey toward sustainability and permaculture started in the late 90s when an Amish friend asked him what he thought it would look like to live intentionally in the modern world according to Christian principles.  David is the office manager, client liason, and is increasingly involved with design and installation.

Paul Drake, 24, from Oak Ridge, TN, is an apprentice with Bountiful Backyards. He comes with experience as a garden manager at Spence's Educational Farm and a carpenter and crew leader at Habitat for Humanity. He has an interest in ecological design both in landscapes and in  architecture. In addition to apprenticing, he takes classes at CCCC in Pittsboro, where he is currently studying permaculture with Harvey Harman.

Ishmael Dennis, 19, from Durham is continuing an apprenticeship that began with the Mayor's Summer Youth Work Program in the Fall of 2009 that placed him with Bountiful Backyards and Good Work.  He is studying medicinal herbs and plants, helping with our installations and community based projects, and working on getting a college degree at NCCU.

Greater Community Support Network: 

John Parker, hails from North Carolina's Sandhills area in the Piedmont region.  He strives to be a good steward of his talents, develop transformative relationships, nurture good work that advances the greater good, and encourage others to do the same.  He leads Good Work, a community development organization with a mission to strengthen people, places, and communities through economic empowerment, entrepreneurship, and sustainable development.  He acts informally as a peer mentor and formally as a fiscal agent for Bountiful Backyard's community development projects.

Chuck Marsh, 48, grew up in South Carolina and lives in Black Mountain, NC where he runs Useful Plants Nursery with his wife Marjorie and assistant Bruce Johnston. Their nursery is where all of our organically raised fruit trees get their first chance to be multi-year producers and providers of abundance. Chuck has designed and installed living systems for over three decades and is a constant source of inspiration and a mentor for all of us.

Darcey Martin, 36, grew up on a farm in rural N.E. Iowa. Darcey is an active Master Gardener Volunteer with the Durham County Extension office, is a professionally trained photographer, and a Reiki Master. She is passionate about sustainable organic gardening and the relationship between plants and their human stewards.  Currently she teaches horticulture in the prison system using ecological gardening practices as a guide for rehabilitation.

Sammy Slade, 34, Grew up in Chapel Hill and Colombia.  Carrboro is his home where he has been hard at work establishing a more resilient community that can cope and mitigate the 'peak everything' world.  To this end he has co-founded both the Carrboro Greenspace and the CCGC community garden.  His community work and experience has led him to study, seek and implement sustainable ways for organizing and values Bountiful Backyards as an organizational model for sustainable community activism.  Currently he serves as an Alderman with the town of Carrboro.  His primary gardening interests are in community gardening and bio-intensive gardening.

Rob Jones, 27, grew up in Silver Spring, MD and has degrees in biology and environmental education. He is currently working on growing and organizing a group of young farmers called the Crop Mob.  Rob is also facilitating the establishment of two community gardens in Pittsboro, NC. Radical educational theory and edible/medicinal mushrooms are of particular interest to him, but Rob also has a strong understanding of human communities and natural systems. 

Stephen Hren, 34, is from Cary, NC, and is the coauthor with his wife Rebekah of the The Carbon-Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit. He has been an organic gardener for over a dozen years and propagates plants for Bountiful Backyards. He also writes and installs solar air heaters, and is a co-organizer for NC Powerdown, which helps facilitate the Triangle community's transition to a post-fossil fuel world. He also has an inordinate fondness for red clover. 

Susan Quinby-Honer, 50, hails from the Northeast but has called Raleigh, NC home for the last twenty years. She is an expert in vermicomposting, providing demonstrations at schools and for private individuals. Susan leads seasonal worm composting demonstrations for Bountiful Backyards Co-Op members, clients, and friends.

Kevin Svara, 33, is a Raleigh, NC native who specializes in historical restoration carpentry. He graduated from Evergreen College in Olympia, WA and has studied permaculture, organic farming, soil science and general biology at many different places over the last decade.

Cynthia Main, 29, is a Raleigh, NC native with many years of experience gardening, farming, and designing landscapes all over the country. She has worked at Niche Gardens (our favorite) in Chapel Hill for many years and has also worked extensively with well-known local herbalist Will Andres studying wildcrafting, medicinal plants, edibles, and wildflowers.  

Rebekah Hren, 33, is a Raleigh, NC native and author. She is a solar electrician that has taught regional and national courses through SEI and installed hundreds of solar system installations around the Triangle. A talented organic gardener, she specializes in native plants and flowers as well as uncommon fruit trees.